Our org. is having to split constituent records (formerly the husband & wife were 1 record). If a spouse dies & the gifts are recorded under the deceased spouse, is it best to keep entering gifts the usual way, or enter under the surviving spouse's record? If this is done, there will be a mixture of hard & soft credits under each record. I would like to know how someone else has done this.

At our organization, When the spouse of a couple dies, the surviving spouse becomes the name on the org one tab, and mark them as "widowed" under "marital status". The deceased spouse is then becomes a "relationship" in the "relationship tab" as "deceased spouse" and marked as deceased on on their General 2 tab. All other info stays the same. Charmaine Desmeules Stand Among Friends Boca Raton Florida [Email Removed]

Charmaine,
That sounds like a good procedure for you. But when a memorial gift comes in, how do you search for the deceased, if they are a relationship on the spouse's primary record.

When you go to search for an individual, it does not search the relationship. How do you find that person?

Becky Creamer
Eisenhower Medical Center
Rancho Mirage, CA

If both people do not already have their own constituent record, we add the surviving spouse as a constituent, keep the records linked and make sure that s/he is soft credited for his/her deceased spouse's past gifts. This way both of them will come up in searches and queries if we want them to. If you run a lot of gift reports, though, I recomend unchecking the " automatically soft credit for spouse's gifts" on the deceased person's record so if the widow/er gives a gifts, the deceased will not show up posthumously on reports. In short, we enter any future gifts on the surviving spouse's record. Kerri Opalka Germantown Academy [i]--- Edited at 4/15/2005 3:46:07 PM by Scott Fortnum[/i]

Becky, Fortunately we are not yet involved with many memorial gifts. If that's the case we open a new record for the surviving spouse and soft credit them. Charmaine Desmeules Stand Among Friends Boca Raton Florida [Email Removed]

Becky When I search for a constituent, I have the Check Partner Name box checked on the Open Constituent screen. This finds spouses even when they are marked as deceased. Gavin Gourley Global Partnerships 206-652-8748 [Email Removed]